50 Shades of Grey : The Storm
by CockEyedGopher
Summary: The sequel to Blurred Lines


She'd just finished her last pack of Pop-Tarts, only had $1.50 to her name, and spent half the day schlepping around town trying to rustle up money for rent and feed. The first one, she wasn't so lucky; every group supposedly funded and initiated with the entire intent to help those in need...didn't seem incredibly interested in...helping someone in need. As far as the latter went, there was a little more success; in about three days she'd be eating normally again, but three days seems a long, long ways away when the last time you had a proper meal was about three days before and you'd survived largely on cold breakfast pastries and one bag of ramen in the time since.

She was too upset to cry. She was beyond tears. Instead, she stared at the wall, catatonic.

"Are you still having the dreams?"

Christian snapped his head in Flynn's direction angrily. Flynn was nonplussed and far from intimidated; probably one of the few people Grey couldn't scare shitless at this point. He raised his eyebrows at Christian, his attempt at a nonverbal press for some sort of response.

"I don't know why you keep bringing this shit up. "

Flynn continued staring in silence.

"God_damn_it!" Grey cried, springing from his chair so suddenly that for once, he caught Flynn off-guard, watching him flinch and shudder visibly in his peripheral vision as he charged across the office, through the door (but not without slamming it hard enough to make a scene), out of the office like a pissed off bull, before eventually peeling down the street in his latest sportscar. He was driving like a maniac, brows furrowed, exposing the wrinkle between them that hadn't been there before. Back in his office, Flynn scribbled notes as furiously as Christian drove.

Hope was a sore point between them now, the verboten subject that the client never wanted to discuss, and the good doc kept insisting on bringing up, despite Christian's visible discomfort. Ana set it off in a rather innocuous way; laughingly, reporting to the doctor in passing that Christian had murmured Hope's name a couple times as he slept. Ana, typically jealous, had seemingly little concern over "the little oddball", as she called her. Hope had been much maligned and mocked in the world press and popular culture to such an extent that Ana's initial acting out at their fundraiser turned out to be a one-off thing and even she found the idea of her husband sleeping with this girl, inherently asinine. In fact in the last few weeks she'd taken to playfully teasing Christian about the whole thing, jokingly referring to Hope as his girlfriend in sing-song tones like a first grader.

After Ana trotted out of the room, in all likelihood to go on another shopping trip ("Money and adoration changes people, not always for the better", Christian had told Flynn during one session), Flynn gave him a loaded stare but said nothing.

At first.

After that he brought up Hope in every single therapy session, and Christian responded with increasing levels of annoyance, awkwardness, and finally, anger. He'd tried to find her; Grey managed to go about two months before he sicced a private investigator after her, but in a rather strange twist, nothing was coming up, other that lots of hearsay and "gossip bullshit" as Christian hollered. He'd been doing that alot lately; the stories coming from her classmates were somewhat disturbing - the baby was this guy's...or that one...or that one's...

Hope was stripping now...Hope was a prostitute...the baby died; "No no!" someone countered, "I heard she aborted it".

_My child._

That's when the dreams started again, this time darker, more macabre and somewhat sinister, but fairly lacking in complexity - Hope drowning, the baby in tow, after she'd just snapped his (or her) neck.

Six months after he blazed out of the good doc's office, good news. The investigator had finally gotten a hit. Grey barrelled down the street towards the library.

She looked the same, but...different somehow, admittedly contradictory but somehow still true all the same. It wasn't sadness; her eyes shown brightly and she seemed quite happy. He stared for the longest time, because he'd wanted to for so long, and now he finally could. She didn't seem to feel his gaze, or maybe she was too busy with work; it was a peak hour.

Hope passed the last patron's books around the security equipment and then turned back to the next customer without even bothering to look up; there was a lot to get done, and a lot of people wanted to get in and out as soon as possible. She couldn't help but notice the subject matter on this latest pass of books, though.

"The Joys of Sex"; "Kama Sutra" - all the comical, cliched cornball books about good old fashioned rutting, combined with a few more curious numbers that made even her blush (and by this point she wasn't one to blush much anymore); however she kept scanning, and what made her finally stop wasn't the books about boinking, it was a familiar smell, a good scent reminding her of good things. It was the books about loss and heartbreak that finally made her pause, stopping to gaze at the strong, muscular hands of the patron in front of her, and those clearly memorable hands made her look up.

His face seemed to be conflicting with itself; his eyes went all liquidy and soft; his mouth contorted into a sideways smirk.

"I always did love to read," he said wryly.


End file.
